Floating down to Camelot

Yes, yes, I know I said I'd try to write something every day in November (except when I was away) but then A Certain Someone remembered that he needed 75 hand-sewn favours to be produced within a week, so I've been spending much of my evenings sewing instead. They only take about 10 to 15 minutes each, but that does add up. But, assuming the pack of crescent moon charms turns up tomorrow (it was due today), I'm now confident that I'll finish them in time, so am taking an hour or two off sewing for book write-ups.

Between mid-August and a couple of weeks ago, I was reading my way through the entire Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. I'll put that in a separate post, but here are the books I've read since then.

( Books read )

Since I'm running late with this, I won't say much about each book.

( Books read in December )

A YA historical romp, a dull fantasy trilogy, some Philip Pullman (including the new one), a literate gorilla and lots of table etiquette.

( Books read in October )

After I finished my Thief series re-read, the month was dominated by Jasper Fforde, pausing only for some undone Victorians and an angry chef"

( Books read in June )

Let's see if I can get this reviewing thing back up and running.

( A Regency romance and two fantasies )

Oh dear. I have completely, utterly failed in my attempt to record everything I read for a year. Here I will attempt to recreate the list of Books Read Since I Failed So Utterly.

( Many, many, many books )

I've failed badly in my resolution to write reviews of everything I read in 2016. Blame holidays, which got me out of the habit.

For several weeks, from late May to the middle of June, I was reading through Dorothy L Sayers' Peter Wimsey novels. I did so in a fairly random order, the first book (Murder Must Advertise) being chosen for me out of thousands of possibles by a series of die rolls. From a random beginning, it seemed fitting to carry on in a random order, so I went to Strong Poison, which I liked, and Gaudy Night, which I liked a lot. I'd read one or two of the series some years ago, but I found them too lacking in emotion for my taste at the time. I don't know why I reacted better to them this time. Perhaps I was just in a different mood. Perhaps it was because Gaudy Night gave me an emotional way in, being a lot more focused on such things than some of the other books. I do often struggle to warm to a main character until I've seen them through other people's eyes, which is why I often find first person narration unengaging. But, anyway, whatever the reason, I read my way - in a fairly eccentric order - through most of the novels, and then went on holiday to Wales, where I got waylaid by King Arthur, so moved on without quite completing my reading of the series.

At some point during my reading of that series, I paused to read The Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon - a brief YA retelling of Norse mythology, from before the building of Asgard all the way through the Ragnarok and beyond, all told in the first person by Hel. The voice is that of a modern teenage girl, informal, colloquial and very angry. It's had some rave reviews, but I just found it grim, depressing and unengaging.

I also read Ferguson's Gang: The Remarkable Story of the National Trust Gangsters, by Polly Bagnall and Sally Beck. Ferguson's Gang were a mysterious group of people who raised money for the National Trust in the 1930s, and presented it masked, in a variety of dramatic and headline-grabbing ways. This was in the early days of the National Trust's involvement in preserving buildings, and Ferguson's Gang arranged and funded their purchase of several small buildings across the country, including Newtown Town Hall on the Isle of Wight. I spent ages one day in Newtown Town Hall reading the facsimile of "The Boo," their minute book. All the members took on assumed names and personas, and The Boo is full of jokes, jollity and japes; it reminded me quite a lot of the minute book of various student societies I was involved in, full of digressions and in-jokes. All the members were women graduates in their 20s, from a variety of backgrounds, so it fitted in quite nicely with my reading of Gaudy Night. One of the authors of the book is the granddaughter of "The Arthichoke," the gang's tame architect, who raised his family in one of the buildings the Gang preserved. The book tells the story of the Gang and of the real people behind the pseudonyms, many of whom had colourful lives, and I found it extremely interesting and readable.

While in Wales, I read the Four Branches of the Mabinogion (Penguin Classics edition) and meant to carry on, but reached the bit when Culhwch spends 6 pages listing every single one of Arthur's warriors, and laid it down for a while, weary. I misaimed on picking it up again, so ended up dipping in and out of Gerald of Wales instead, both his tour of Wales and his description of Wales. I do like Gerald, with his shameless bias towards his own birthplace and family's lands, his ability to go off on long tangents about the habits of beavers, and the way he misses no opportunity to plug his latest book or have a dig at Geoffrey of Monmouth. (Must reread him, too.)

I tried to read the Maginogion sequence of novels by Evangeline Walton, but really didn't take to them at all, so gave up very early.

Since getting back from Wales, I've been obsessing on Arthurian legend, but I did take a brief break from it to read Binny Bewitched by Hilary McKay - one of the few children's book authors who gets me to read out of my usual favourite genres. I particularly love her Exiles series - humorous mini-misadventures of a family of four book-obsessed sisters - but I'm enjoying this current series, too, of which this is the third. Set in a small Cornish village, it deals with 12 year old Binnie, her family and her various nemeses - she always seems to have a nemesis. There are no massive dramas and no heavy-handed Issues. It's just the small dramas of daily life, with nice characters, lots of humour and some lovely turns of phrase.

Yet more book reviews:

( Science fiction, this time )

Divinity Original Sin is a computer game, and I like it. There. That's probably all that most people reading this need to know.

If, however, you want my long ramblings about this game and how it compares to Baldur's Gate - my Best Game Ever that has long reigned unchallenged - read on.

( Much rambling about Divinity Original Sin and Baldur's Gate )

We went to see The Hobbit last night. For context: I love all three Lord of the Rings movies, enough to watch them 3 or 4 times each in the cinema, and to watch pretty much every single extra on the extended edition DVDs. I do have niggles, but they're mostly aesthetic - green, sploshy Dead with their popcorn skulls, unfeasibly enormous elephants, catapults that can hurl half a house, and elves that speak... so... very... sloooooowly.

( The Hobbit: not really spoilery, but behind a cut, anyway )

Finally, most people on my Friends list who have expressed a preference thus far have specifically sought out the 2D version. Therefore, out of interest:

[Poll #1886331]

I watched the first episode of Richard Hammond's Invisible Worlds last night. It was all about those things that happen too fast for the human eye to see, and it showed slowed-down footage of various things - exploding spores, flying bees, swimming dolphins etc. - to show what was really happening. I found it all very interesting, and there were some really arresting images.

However, if I'd received a pound whenever he said something along the lines of, "We can't see what's happening because it's too fast for the human eye to see. Only by slowing it down can we understand it," I would be rich by now - especially if I had a bonus pay-out whenever he said Invisible Worlds, in capitals, as part of this. Yes, Richard, we do understand the point of this episode. It would be hard not to, given that you've said it 59 times already in the last hour.

At least it didn't make me want to throw things at the screen, which many modern factual TV shows do. You get the first five minutes wasted on an extended trailer of forthcoming attractions, with the presenter getting ever more excited as the music swells. You get the presenter pretending to be a total idiot, as he and the viewer go on a "journey" together to "discover" the answer to some question or other. You get the presenter raving about some wonderful sight, only for the camera to whiz around so fast that you can't look at it, or else to spend the whole time focusing on a close-up of the presenter's face as he speaks about how moved the sight makes him. You get "amazing discoveries" of things that have actually been known for years, and you get minority opinions expressed as fact - something I notice in history programmes about periods I know about, and which therefore makes me sceptical of anything they tell me in programmes about things I don't know about.

I did rather enjoy the recent BBC series on geology, though, since all the jet-setting and dramatic stunts did at least serve to demonstrate valid points. I've only seen a bit of the new Solar System series on Sunday evenings, but I liked most of that, too. At least the presenter didn't pretend to be an idiot, and explained things to us, rather than standing there nodding like a fool while some "expert" explained things to him. I was, however, rather distracted by the fact that he popped up in all the four corners of the earth while still wearing the same t-shirt.